CHAPTER 23: CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: LINES OF DEFENCE

The hum of the air conditioner filled the office—steady, low, and a little too calm for the thoughts that refused to settle.

An Yancheng sat behind his desk, his gaze fixed on the faint steam curling above his untouched tea. The air felt heavy, though nothing in the room had changed. Perhaps it wasn’t the air that shifted—but him.

His sister’s visit should’ve been a pleasant interruption. A brief moment of warmth in a day buried under figures and signatures. Yet the way she’d spoken lingered.

Not the words themselves, but the weight beneath them.

Pretending not to see something wrong only delays the collapse.

He had answered with a polite promise—"I’ll think about it"—the kind of line meant to close a conversation.

Except it hadn’t.

Now, it looped through his mind alike a quiet metronome, keeping time with a discomfort he couldn’t name.

He leaned back, eyes drifting to the skyline beyond the window. The city pulsed below, a rhythm of ambition and noise.

He should have felt grounded in it. Instead, it felt strangely distant.

Perhaps this unease started earlier—before Ningning arrived, before her soft but deliberate words.

Perhaps it had begun with Gu Yuehua, their mother.

Gu Yuehua’s voice returned to him, calm but edged. She had told him what happened at the gown fitting—how Song Qingwan and An Ya had spent the entire time chatting and laughing, treating An Ning like she wasn’t even there.

When they were asked to have their bags checked for missing ring, it was An Ning they’d looked to first.

And through it all, Song Qingwan had stood by silently—neither defending An Ning nor stopping the insinuation.

He’d been angry when he heard it, but he’d swallowed it. A misunderstanding, he’d told himself. A lapse in judgement.

In truth, he’d nearly called to confront Song Qingwan that night. It had taken his mother’s calm voice to stop him.

"If you’re already this unsettled before marriage," Gu Yuehua’s voice returned had said, "you should decide now whether it’s worth continuing. Because if you marry her as she is, don’t expect her attitude toward Ningning to change later."

Her words had stayed with him. He’d told himself she was being cautious, but a part of him had wondered—perhaps she was right.

He’d even considered suggesting that, after the wedding, Song Qingwan live somewhere in the city instead of the family house—just to avoid unnecessary tension and keep the peace.

Now, through the lens of Ningning’s quiet warning, that hesitation no longer felt unreasonable.

It felt like foresight.

He frowned, fingers drumming lightly against his desk. There had been other things too—things he’d waved off without thinking.

The way Song Qingwan’s expression tightened whenever An Ning’s name appeared in conversation.

How she had begun visiting the office more frequently these past few weeks, always "coincidentally" when An Yanming happened to be around.

How she showed sudden interest in Project Phoenix, the land development deal his team had been refining.

At first, he’d thought it considerate—that she cared enough to involve herself, that she was ready to build a life with him.

Now, he wasn’t so sure.

He leaned back, fingers tracing the rim of his teacup. It struck him, suddenly, how much of their relationship had been built on his own initiative.

The dinners he arranged between meetings. The calls he made first. The small gestures—flowers, theatre tickets, weekend drives—she accepted with practiced grace but never returned in kind.

His mother was wrong—he did know how to show affection. But when that affection wasn’t returned in kind, he simply stopped offering it.

And once he stopped, he found it surprisingly easy to keep things that way.

Song Qingwan was always agreeable, always smiling, always just warm enough to keep distance from feeling like rejection.

It wasn’t that she was cold—just...absent, in a way that made presence feel optional.

And until now, he hadn’t question it. He had thought it was because they weren’t married out of love but he was willing to try to develop some feelings together. Apparently, it was because she had someone else in her mind, so she was never open to trying.

He wondered, briefly, if love was supposed to feel this quiet—like a performance with no audience, no applause, and no real reason to keep going.

But An Yancheng didn’t blame this on her. But betrayal—no matter the reason—was something he couldn’t forgive.

He opened the Phoenix Project file again. Rows of figures filled the page—steady growth, clean margins, the kind of progress that drew attention from competitors.

Song Qingwan had been visiting the office more often lately of her own accord, always with the same smile and the same excuse—"Just thought I’d help keep you company while you work."

She said it often enough that it began to sound rehearsed.

At first, he hadn’t minded, thinking she was softening toward him. It seemed harmless enough. Until he remembered what Ningning had said.

The seed of doubt was planted.

He thought of the times she’d lingered by his desk, her eyes drifting to open folders, the way her questions circled back to numbers she shouldn’t have known.

So, before leaving for his next meeting, he quietly switched the Phoenix Project folder with a duplicate—an earlier draft of the proposal, polished enough to look authentic.

It carried the old bid projection, conservative profit margins, and a few deliberate gaps—nothing obvious, nothing sloppy, just enough to mislead anyone who wasn’t deeply familiar with the project’s structure.

If someone were to open it, they’d see a convincing plan, complete with signatures and timelines, but one that would never win against the real proposal now sitting securely in his private server.

Enough to satisfy curiosity.

Enough to fool whoever that asked Song Qingwan to steal this.

Not enough to matter.

He closed the drawer with a quiet finality, the click of the lock soft but certain.

For a long moment, he simply stood there, hand resting on the desk. A flicker of something unreadable crossed his face—doubt, perhaps, or disappointment waiting to be confirmed.

Half an hour later, his phone buzzed. Miss Song has arrived downstairs, the receptionist texted.

The office felt colder once the decision was made. Not because of the air, but because trust, once questioned, could never quite return back to its usual temperature.

He considered it for a moment, then replied, "Let her wait in the office. Tell her I’ll be at a meeting first."

The cursor blinked on his screen, waiting for input. For once, he had none.

He had set the stage.

Now, he only had to wait.

He hoped Song Qingwan wouldn’t disappoint him.